


Stone Eyes Look Through the Sun

by jazzfic



Category: Big Bang Theory
Genre: Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-07
Updated: 2010-12-07
Packaged: 2017-10-13 13:31:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/137924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jazzfic/pseuds/jazzfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of a night spent at the top of 2311 North Los Robles, in which time passes as in life, with conversation being of little consequence, and minds wander.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stone Eyes Look Through the Sun

There is heat in the air. It blooms across the rooftops.

Look closely, look without thinking, and you could almost reach out and touch it.

 

~

Through the eye of his telescope the stars appear to swirl, an oil-film distortion across the lens, as if the warmth and hazy night have somehow conspired to play trickery on those still unable to sleep. Raj has to make several adjustments before he can see properly, but even then something in the vast scene remains disconcertingly off-center, the cosmic bodies he should know by heart scattered and unreachable. It's all very strange.

He thinks, fleetingly, of the Arctic hut, freeze-dried meals and Howard's crossbow. At this time of year summer should have left, but it's stubbornly holding on to the city, and an impromptu suggestion to gather on the rooftop and see out the night hasn't helped shift the feeling that if he stays up here he'll be trapped in a dome and unable to escape. It makes him think of his parents, their mild but collective disapproval; because the sun rises in the east, and this is as far from home as the earth circles.

It's a circle that never seems to stop, and he wishes--

But here is Howard, tapping him on the shoulder, so Raj lets his thoughts drift a little, to be recalled later (indeed, a great deal later, when there's ice on his skin and not sweat). He gives a shrug and swivels the arm of the telescope.

"That's right, baby," Howard murmurs, to the sky, "align for papa..."

Murmurs to the sky, to nothing that can or will ever murmur back. He blinks and sees a picture of the two of them, still here, wide awake and eyes all above, on another sleepless night, in five, ten, thirty years' time. Nothing unusual there, but in a way it resembles the crossbow, still a tired and drawn out theory. And in the meantime there is heat in the air, it is almost two a.m. by his watch, and time is dragging as the temperature fails to drop.

Raj sends an apology to the constellations unfortunate enough to fall under his friend's gaze. Except his words are too meek to be heard, so perhaps they are only for him.

 

~

There may not be another universe in which a certain Texan dances, but among all that is crazy and singular, there must be a world somewhere that rewards his entirely sane roommate for what he must endure here.

It takes a great effort on Leonard's part to agree to Howard's suggestion. Unlike the others, he'd pretty much zoned out to sleep upon finishing that evening's Halo battle (result: a win, by a stroke of genius; he puts it down to Penny's slow-cooked frustration from a bad day's waitressing, and Sheldon griping all the way through dinner about the chopsticks) and the idea of sitting up on the sticky rooftop, sweating out the heatwave and listening to the further misadventures of Chinese cuisine in today's modern America--as opposed to doing much the same but alone in between cool sheets and blissful silence--doesn't exactly appeal.

But what can he say. He's there for his friends. He's good old Leonard, reliable to the core.

A small, unhappy voice, speaking from an exhaustion driven in part by one too many negative results, an almost impossible work schedule, and the fact that he can't seem to say no, enough, for crying out loud, just _put up_ with things for once like the rest of the world, _Sheldon_ \--it's telling him he's letting it all build up again. It's telling him that when it breaks, the frustration, it's going to be with a crash and an echo that is sightly whining, slightly pathetic, will only reinforce what his mother has always said about his failures as a human being--

(In this case, 'said' refers not to actual speech, a friendly chat on the phone, or a motherly text message with a well-intentioned but out of date emoticon, but rather a two thousand word executive summary in bullet-points with suggested further reading, delivered to Leonard by way of Sheldon's inbox, at Sheldon's discretion, which could mean today, in a month, or never. The joys of family, oh how they continue unbound.)

\--and will end with Leslie Winkle, most likely, because he can't knock on 4B any more and show the faceless audience of his life that smile and sunlit dream.

Leonard makes a face that no one sees. It might be an idea to tone down the melodrama at some point.

Well, maybe. It's occasionally satisfying, in a warped kind of way.

He stands with his head against the propped open door and watches as Raj grapples with the telescope and closes one eye upon it, with Howard pointing out suggestions, the pair of them looking more awake than ever. See? _See?_ His poetic heart, and no one to hear it.

Unbelievably, it feels hotter out here than it was indoors. They should have gone midnight rappelling down the elevator shaft.

"Rappelling?"

And behold, the dream speaks. Leonard shakes himself awake, startled at her voice. "No." His mouth twists into a half-smile. "Actually I, uh, didn't mean to say that out loud."

Penny leans back a little from where she's sitting cross-legged next to Sheldon. Her nails are painted a pale turquoise, and the light from the door catches them so they shine. "It would be kind of cramped," she says, "all of us in there at once."

"Plus I would likely pass out," adds Sheldon, his words carrying in the dark with irritating volume. "We are altogether safer up here, Leonard. I am somewhat alarmed that you would even suggest otherwise."

They share a look, Leonard and Penny. It's a mixture of _damn his Vulcan hearing_ , and _I don't really know what to say. To you or to...yeah. Mostly you_. Because talking leads to glances of uncertainty, stalling for answers in a doorway or empty stairwell; it leads to drinking and regrets and more arguments, accusations in a different order, but always about the same things. He's been there, poetic heart or not, been there enough now to recognise a negative result when this time it might actually mean something.

But he likes her smile. He wants to keep seeing it even if he knows that he can no longer claim it. They can blame him forever on that, right universe or not.

 

~

This one's brighter, so much brighter than the rest. He concentrates, looking hard into the telescope and for so long that finally he has to blink, and even then there's still a clear, white spot behind his eyelids.

Something pops into his head: _stars shining bright above you, night breezes seem to whisper I love you...dream a little_ \--well, yes, if only. When Howard was a boy his mom would play this song on a clapped out tape deck (salvaged at a garage sale, with a Backstreet Boys CD still inside, hey it was the nineties, okay?) and she would sing along nasally and out of key with Louis Armstrong. Thinking this breaks his focus and rubs the light away. _But in your dreams, whatever they be_. Corny, marshmallow fluff lyrics, he thinks, but not without some fondness, because even as an embarrassed adolescent, edgily hormonal and wanting to escape back to his comic books, he would always end up singing along. Great. That's going to be in his head all night now.

His face must give something away, because Raj is looking at him oddly. Howard bats this momentary lapse to the side with a flick of his hand, adding a wink in for good measure. Universal Wolowitz-speak for all's right in the world, hey, this is me just taking a break from the goddesses on high. He says as much out loud, and is rewarded with brown eyes narrowing slightly and the smallest of smiles. It's one of good nature, tolerance, something very quiet between them. Old Louis fades a little and Howard takes a drink from the now warm bottle in his lap. He puts the neck to his lips and tastes air. Damn his sentimentality.

"What did you see?" Raj whispers. Whispers because even though Penny is some distance away, she's still in earshot, and neuroses hear for miles. He doesn't quite pull away when the words end.

"I'm not sure." The swagger's all but gone now, and he finds that he's whispering back, and there's nothing in that, not at all. Besides, it's in the song. "Maybe a fireball on Venus?"

He's fallen into a hopeful tone, the one that wants his friend to join in so they can escape in a telescopic geek fantasy. There is a long pause as Raj thinks this over. It stretches into a true silence, and then he is adjusting the controls, looking through with a frown. He turns it back to Howard, who looks, looks for a long moment until the darkness fades and is replaced with a light that glows imperiously before his eyes; and although Raj can't see it, he's smiling back, because it's the brightest of all.

 

 

There is heat in the air. Heat and human contact and nobody sleeps.

Look closely, before it's all dreamt away.

 

~

"Sweetie, are you sure you're okay sitting?"

There's a fairly obvious answer to this, but she feels compelled to ask all the same. He appears to be nothing but angles and sharp edges, and he's moving, moving constantly. At his side, Penny's legs are crossed and comfortable. She's warm, yes, they all are, but it's nice up here, oddly serene. Maybe it's the stars.

Or not. Sheldon makes an unhappy noise, the one that sounds like a dejected moose stuck quietly in a hole. She tries to catch his eye. In the dim light, his face is hard to make out, but it doesn't stop her _hearing_ the pout in his voice when he says, "No, I'm most certainly not. Concrete is in no way conducive to relaxation."

He wriggles a bit as if to better illustrate. She's pretty sure if he had a board and marker nearby he'd draw a few squiggles for her reference, representing whatever formula sums up muscle to hard immovability (answer: lean, scrawny, not a bit of weight), but is reminded instead of cushions and paint-ball splatters, of a Sheldon who has two PhDs but a singular, possessive attachment to one tiny spot in the universe. And instead of being irritated she wants to reach out, put a hand to his arm, knee, _something_ that will--

That will what, Penny? Calm a racehorse? A sense of guilt?

She realises that she's drifted partly into his personal space, and pulls back almost in the same breath. It's like a crackling force field, that strange, no-fly zone around his body, invisible and unremarkable until you become one of the few individuals to have breached it, willingly or not. (And the times he does, acting on his own instincts, past fear and the most alien of social obligations, in those bare moments it's as if they share a tight and crazy heartbeat; Sheldon's excuse being an obligation to social mores with perhaps just a smattering of endorphins; Penny's an empty wine glass and sometimes, out of nowhere, an unexplained happiness.) As much as she loves teasing him, she's not willing to go there tonight. Serene Penny, remember that. Be calm, drink in the serenity, he might absorb some; it's a night of extremes, after all.

But she can't stop herself making offers in an embarrassingly placating manner. She'd be happy to run downstairs and bring back a couple of pillows, would he like that? How about an ice cream? She cringes at that last one, because he's finally stopped moving and is looking at her with deeply suspicious eyes. On the other side of the roof she can hear Howard's voice; he's droning on about something space-related or other; a little desperate now to break the quiet, she offers Sheldon an unopened water bottle, and says, more softly, "I know. I'm sorry."

At first he doesn't answer. Instead he twists the cap, takes a sip and then frowns at his fingers, which come away wet and shining from the condensation. He looks about for somewhere to dry them, eventually resorting to the hem of his t-shirt. The material's dark, so nothing will show, but the way his lips tug to one side gives his discomfort away.

"Whatever for?" he asks, distracted.

His hands are still in the air, an inch above his thighs, the tendons flexing in one of those reflexive ticks he seems to possess in a never-ending battery of compulsive variations. _Because you already have a mother_ , she thinks. _You already have a goddamn sister. I'm trying to be_... A friend? God, there's a part of her that wonders if she's doing all this wanting for herself, a desperate sort of reaching out that's disguised in cheerful tolerance.

Penny waits until his fingers stop twisting and settle, until he turns his long neck and fixes his eyes upon hers, and that's when she takes a breath and says, sweeping past the truth and his question, "Hey. So, uh, tell me about Venus."

For all his sheer willpower and focus, it's surprising just how little it can take to distract him. Maybe it _does_ require a mom or a twin sister to work that out faster than Penny, but she's awfully sure she's alone in many ways. Here the fact that they're nowhere near Raj's telescope has little effect on his ability to see things in the high alcove of black; a million invisible Bat signals scattered far across space.

And though her query is vague and makes no sense, the way he looks back and allows his face to relax makes her forget the guilt, so she touches a hand to the edge of his shirt, neatening the cotton where he's left it, forgotten, in worrying creases.

"Venus?" Sheldon repeats, considering her. "You do realise, Penny, that to understand the planets we must step back _even farther_ than a warm summer's evening in Ancient Greece. I see you have water, a small surplus in fact--but have you fortitude for such a journey?"

Throughout this he doesn't once edge away from her hand; when she nods in return, his acknowledgement is to blink and then turn away. Whatever discomfort existed, it seems to ebb away as he begins to talk. They're not numbers, these planets and stars, they're not a theory; but if she's learnt anything in the time she's known him, it's that they belong to maybe the only thing he seems capable of loving, the triumph of an impossible world.

It's a very small smile, Penny's. She keeps it to herself.

 

~

In 1969, among those statements which would endure to provoke arguments decades later, Jimmy Carter is said to have seen an object in the sky, a point of light so stark and so astonishing that no reason for its appearance could be given. But then the year in question was an eventful one, marking both the end of a decade that had done much to change the world and the beginning of one that would follow in kind, and if nothing else, these anecdotes survive as part of the larger biography, whether or not they are true in the slightest.

"Now, I am the first to agree that if it weren't for aliens--or UFOs if you will--the science fiction canon as we know it today would be dazzlingly thin. But let us consider Occam's razor." Here Sheldon pauses and holds a hand out before his eyes. He splits his fore and middle fingers so that a sliver of Pasadena emerges, the bottom half high-rise tower blocks and city lights, the top a sky with no end. Creations of man and the universe, the last weighted, by the natural V shape, with an importance he finds an innate satisfaction in. "With all possibilities considered, the simplest explanation is often the right one. What he saw was most likely Venus."

"Occam's razor..." Penny frowns slightly, and then her eyes sparkle as a recollection locks into place. "Oh! Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey. Boy, he looked _good_ in that tux."

He huffs a little in frustration. The ability of Penny's to latch on to his very sane argument and all but push it into a weird, parallel pop culture stream of thought, no matter how tenuous or irrelevant, is truly bizarre. How she always manages to achieve this is a complete mystery to Sheldon. With begrudging generosity he lets her comment have its appropriate consideration (two seconds, in which he snaps his fingers and the sliver of landscape closed), before moving on to Venus's thermal inertia and the curiosities derived from an almost permanent cloud cover. A subject of _vastly_ more interest than the overstimulated imagination of one of America's venerated presidents, even if he was on the eve of a governorship at the time, and in his defence most likely found a bright and distracting light a hundred times more captivating than the audience he happened to be addressing that evening.

(At least, this is what Sheldon likes to think; until the day he perfects time travel, history is really just a long trail of guesses. Apart from science, of course. Science is fact and fact is perfection, and nothing in that will ever change.

No matter how awkward one becomes sitting cross-legged on concrete.)

"Pretend that you're a stone, on one of the vast Venusian plateaus," he enthuses. "A tiny stone, trying to remain grounded in surface winds that, despite their relatively low speed, have disarming power from the remarkable density of the atmosphere. Look around, what do you see?"

"Um," Penny says. "Well...I see _you_. And I can see Howard, and a bit of Raj's sleeve. And oh, if I lean forward I can see the sign of that 7-Eleven down there. Does that count?"

" _Venus_ , Penny. Venus. The tiny stone, remember? While I am perhaps applying a very basic anthropomorphosis in making my point, I _highly_ doubt that anything, inanimate or not, would have vision sprightly enough to see a 7-Eleven from a distance of between 28 and 162 million miles depending on the position relative to Earth."

He says this last part very fast, all in one breath, and then he blinks, because somewhere in the depths of his mind the thought occurs that perhaps he's missing the point.

Penny neither replies nor reacts; she just watches him. Somewhat irked at so easily succumbing to distraction, he continues on, at a speed closer to normal.

"But at the furthest reach of orbit one would have to look through the sun...and then, presumably, lie in a dark room for a very long time."

There is another pause. In it Sheldon laments, very briefly, that his schedule does not allow more time for role-playing conversations such as these. There, at least, he has some control; in reality they tend to meander with disheartening abandon.

"So _I'm_ the tiny stone?" Penny says at last.

"Yes."

Her eyes narrow slightly. "Right. I'm trying to work out a way not to be offended by that."

"It's not meant to be offensive, it's meant to be educational. If anything I believe I'm paying you a compliment."

"How?"

"The tiny stone is a near approximation to mankind's yet uncharted venture into a distant world. A world we know so much about in theory, but have yet to set foot upon. You, Penny, are that sole representative; it is through _your_ eyes that we see."

"Then why make me a stone? Why not just say, Penny, you're off in your spaceship and oh, hey! You've landed on a distant world. Take some photos with your phone and post them on Facebook. They'll be all blurry, but who cares, you're the first goddamn woman on the planet!"

He has no real response to this. Her shrill tone and unnecessary use of air quotes are enough to render anyone mute.

Maybe he should have just said yes to the ice cream.

"In the ancient world it was believed that Venus was two heavenly stars," Sheldon says, glancing down at his awkwardly folded legs. Ridiculous, he's ridiculous. Lost REM sleep and now the farce of having to explain why a tiny, perfectly formed stone can represent an innocent scientific ideal, if perhaps a touch poetically. He reaches for the bottle of water, turns the cap, but doesn't drink. "The bringers of dawn and evening; _eosphorus_ and _hesperus_. Many civilizations identified her with some of the greatest and most beautiful goddesses in the pantheon."

Penny looks at him. At least, he thinks she does, for his own eyes are still focused on the bottle and the strange dent the cap is now making in the ball of his thumb. But he feels it. "Her?" she repeats.

"Obviously, I...don't speak scientifically."

He turns back, and she smiles, suddenly and brightly. She reaches out and pokes him on the knee. But it's gentle, all of it, hardly more than a touch; her disharmony is the flash from a rock burning up in orbit, a brief existence and then gone.

Sheldon wonders if being comforted by this is as odd as it sounds. Though he has the feeling that it might make her laugh, so he retreats without overture to the familiar territory of his own imagination, and ends the conversation.

 

~

There isn't really a lot more to be said after that.

To be fair, this is no longer the fault of an incessant heatwave. Or the fact that Howard has commandeered the telescope for uses of the non-astronomical variety. Or that there's now a mosquito whirring around, and once it drones into Sheldon's radar, you can say goodnight to the serenity. No, it's mostly because of Leonard. Leonard, having settled down in a more or less horizontal fashion with Raj's padded lens bag as a pillow, and having drifted off to sleep somewhere around Occam's razor, begins at this point to snore, so they all take the opportunity to stand and make fun of him. With the exception of Sheldon, who stands but topples in almost the same movement as both his legs cramp up.

And besides, once on two feet, it's difficult for any of them to find a reason to sit again.

Raj packs up his telescope. It comes apart in an endless series of clicks. He finds this so satisfying that he doesn't notice the first rays of light, a pale dilution of the sky, soon to form sharper rays that will spread to the eastern windows of every building.

Leonard wipes a hand over his eyes and pushes his glasses back on. He's thinking about writing an email, consisting of just one sentence, ('I'm gloriously happy, mother') followed by a footnote one thousand words long. And then hitting the delete key. He holds the door open instead.

Howard helps with the gear, helping without being asked or needing to offer. He hums a tune beneath his breath and when Raj asks him what it is, Howard whispers the answer because sentimentality is nothing if not shared. Also, and with all respect to Louis Armstrong, he'd kind of like something else in his head.

Penny waits for Sheldon. She waits patiently, and says, "I think I'd make a pretty good astronaut." She holds his water bottle and smiles down at him, even though he can't see. In a backwards way, characteristic only to his strange and infuriating mind, Penny knows that in all that talk about surface winds and tiny stones and Jimmy Carter mistaking a star for ET, he wasn't lying when he said he'd paid her a compliment. And so wonders never cease.

Sheldon whimpers softly. He eventually stands, shaking out the pain, and because he won't touch the rail he has to grasp her shoulder to keep upright. There is nothing under his hand but her bare skin. _Core temperature_ , he thinks, bringing up facts in quick succession so he doesn't have to think about what this feels like, _at 36.4 degrees, the nadir occurs at sleep_. Not under the stars, not up there, not in the barren craters of a far away place. When did Howard ever have an idea based on sense? It's going to take him days to settle back into a normal pattern after tonight. He glances at his watch. There is no more tonight. He means today. Penny's skin is very dry, and very warm. Except in the places where it's not.

"Too many adjectives," Sheldon says, letting go of Penny as he reaches the door. Letting go because Leonard is there, looking at him like he knows things he shouldn't, and because confusion and sleep don't mix well.

"I know, buddy," Leonard says tiredly, as they push the door and turn it shut.

Penny starts down the stairs; Leonard follows her without a word. Raj and Howard have not waited and are already one floor down.

And Sheldon, on his own again, hobbles from one foot to the other, until his eyes adjust to the light.

 

~

Venus, that bright star, is no welcoming place. There is heat in the air, of a ferocity near impossible to conceive. It lasts forever.


End file.
